When heterogeneous applications, e.g. MES applications, are interconnected in a software system, the objects and/or object trees of the respective applications are mostly represented in different ways in the meta model of the software system, even if the objects and/or object trees are semantically consistent. These differences in representation make communication between the applications more difficult.
“Software für die Automatisierung—Transparenz über die Abläufe schaffen” (“Software for automation—creating transparency across processes”), an article by Dirk Kozian in “Elektronik für die Automatisierung 11”, Nov. 17, 1999, discloses the use of what are termed “Manufacturing Execution Systems” (MES) for automating production and manufacturing processes. These systems integrate the automation level (Controls) with the ERP systems (ERP: Enterprise Resource Planning) of the corporate executive management level. Manufacturing Execution systems are systems which provide, for example, information for optimizing production processes. On the one hand, the Manufacturing Execution systems must supplement the rough planning data of the ERP systems with equipment-specific and up-to-date fine planning data and forward this data accordingly to the underlying automation level; on the other hand, they are required to extract production-relevant information from the automation level and report it further to the corporate executive management level. MES systems therefore fulfill the role of providing a vertical integration between the corporate executive management level and the automation level. Typical individual tasks of MES systems are enterprise asset management, maintenance management, information management, scheduling, dispatching, and trace & track. These tasks are executed in each case by the respective MES components or MES applications.
Due to the technical software- and data-related heterogeneity of the MES applications, however, they can be integrated into a common system or project only with very great difficulty and the data exchange between these applications can be implemented only with extra investment of time and effort.
“Massive Wiederverwendung: Konzepte, Techniken und Organisation” (“Massive reuse: concepts, techniques and organization”), an article by Ulrich Lindner in OBJEKTspektrum 1/96, pp. 10-17, discloses how software components may be integrated into a software system by means of what are termed adapters or by wrapping. The aim here is to increase the reusability of software components.
“XML—Schlüsseltechnologie für Softwarearchitekturen” (“XML—key technology for software architectures”), an article by Alexander Jung in OBJEKTspektrum 1/2001, pp. 71-74, discloses how XML (extensible Markup Language) may be used for data exchange between dissimilar systems and at the same time for performing transformations. A standard procedure for transforming XML documents is defined in the context of the XML family: XSL transformations (XSL stands for Extensible Stylesheet Language). By means of XSL transformations it is also possible to describe tree transformations, but only if the objects of the trees are present in XML format and the respective XML format is known to a user. If a user wants to perform a transformation of an object tree, he or she requires the associated representation of the objects in XML format and must define the transformation at the XML level.
This requires time and effort, for the user must first obtain the corresponding XML formats of the objects.
“Konfigurieren statt Programmieren—Die Empfehlungen of the ZVEI-Arbeitskreises Systemaspekte, 1. Teil” (“Configuring instead of programming—the recommendations of the ZVEI System Aspects Working Group”, Part 1), an article in Elektronik 8/1994, pp. 112-117, describes how the software automation systems may be configured or “projected”. No configurable systems for cross-sector problems are present, however.